By The American Immigration Council

The United States has broad authority to detain certain categories of immigrants, migrants, and others seeking humanitarian protection as their proceedings wind their way through the immigration legal system. This detention is “civil” by definition (as opposed to criminal), meaning that immigration detention should not be punitive in nature. Despite this technical legal distinction, most of the immigration detention infrastructure is indistinguishable from the criminal detention context, in some instances using the same facilities and private corporations to operate detention centers and jails. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) states that the purpose of immigration detention is twofold: 1) to protect the wider community from those noncitizens who may pose a safety risk; and 2) to ensure that the individual will comply with any immigration proceedings (including removal). For the last two decades, there has been increasing interest in the United States and abroad to create and expand alternatives to detention for noncitizens who would otherwise be sent to immigration detention centers. This is due to an increasing understanding that detention is fundamentally harmful and inhumane—especially to immigrants of color— that there are alternatives that can achieve similar objectives to those the government is pursuing, and that there has been very little meaningful reform of immigration detention itself. For example, the current standards that govern the conditions of most immigrant detention centers, the Performance-Based National Detention Standards, were explicitly based on criminal pre-trial detention and were written in 2011, with minor updates made in 2016 and no updates in the years since then. Study after study has shown that alternatives to detention programs are generally more humane and more cost-effective than immigration detention.

Washington, DC: American Immigration Council, 2022. 9p.

By Evan J. Criddle

For generations, the United States has grappled with high levels of illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border. This Article offers a novel theoretical framework to explain why legal order remains elusive at the border. Drawing inspiration from Lon Fuller’s “interactional view of law,” I argue that immigration law cannot attract compliance unless it is general, public, prospective, clear, consistent, and stable; obedience with its rules is feasible; and the law’s enforcement is congruent with the rules as enacted. The flagrant violation of any one of these principles could frustrate the development of a functional legal order. Remarkably, U.S. immigration law violates all of these principles in its treatment of asylum seekers. As the number of asylum seekers pursuing entry to the United States has risen sharply in recent years, these legality deficits have become increasingly salient. No wonder, then, that even the most aggressive deterrent measures — from mass prosecution to family separation to the construction of steel border walls — have failed to solve the United States’ border crisis. The United States faces an urgent dilemma: it may preserve the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”) in its current form, denying protection to too many forced migrants and reserving broad discretion to the Executive Branch, or it may establish a functional legal order at the border. It cannot have both.

If lawmakers were serious about establishing legal order at the border, there are measures they could take to strengthen the immigration system’s structural integrity. They could eliminate the Attorney General’s discretionary authority over asylum. They could clarify ambiguities in the INA to promote greater consistency, stability, and congruence in immigration adjudication and enforcement. They could extend protection to all forced migrants who face a serious risk of death, torture, rape, or other serious harm abroad, including victims of gang violence and gender-based violence. In short, they could enact laws that asylum seekers could rationally obey. To the extent that lawmakers are unwilling to take these steps, it is fair to question their commitment to establishing a functional legal order at the border.

UC Davis Law Review, Vol. 53; 2003.

By UNODC

Trafficking in persons is a serious crime and a violation of human rights that severely impacts the lives of its victims and undermines the security and well-being of societies as a whole. As the 2020 UNODC Global Report on Trafficking in Persons confirms, trafficking in persons is widespread around the world. Whilst the crime is mostly registered as a domestic phenomenon, it also has a transnational nature, where countries can be a country of origin, transit or destination, and sometimes all three at once. Given its magnitude, quantification of the crime can be difficult, particularly given that it also affects most industries and sectors and is connected to other forms of organised crime. For this reason, solutions to address the crime can neither be isolated nor merely involving governments. The complexity of trafficking in persons requires a holistic, coordinated and multi-stakeholder effort that spans geographies and sectors. Public agencies’ interventions require a multi- agency approach, but in addition the private sector must actively engage in this fight.

Examples of how public-private partnerships can be effective in sustaining these efforts are multi- pronged. For instance, private sector companies have at their disposal a wide range of technological tools that can be used to support governments’ anti-trafficking efforts. Private companies have the capacity to identify and address cases of trafficking and exploitation in their supply chain. In that regard, the public sector might acquire new skills and additional knowledge on sustainable procurement processes, how companies identify and manage risks and the multiple forms that trafficking can take. Finally, public-private partnerships can significantly facilitate investigations to trace the financial gains or organised criminal activities such as those involving trafficking in persons.

Vienna: UNODC, 2021. 124p.

Edited by Richard C.M. Mole

Europe is a popular destination for LGBTQ people seeking to escape discrimination and persecution. Yet, while European institutions have done much to promote the legal equality of sexual minorities and a number of states pride themselves on their acceptance of sexual diversity, the image of European tolerance and the reality faced by LGBTQ migrants and asylum seekers are often quite different. To engage with these conflicting discourses, Queer Migration and Asylum in Europe brings together scholars from politics, sociology, urban studies, anthropology and law to analyse how and why queer individuals migrate to or seek asylum in Europe, as well as the legal, social and political frameworks they are forced to navigate to feel at home or to regularise their status in the destination societies. The subjects covered include LGBTQ Latino migrants’ relationship with queer and diasporic spaces in London; diasporic consciousness of queer Polish, Russian and Brazilian migrants in Berlin; the role of the Council of Europe in shaping legal and policy frameworks relating to queer migration and asylum; the challenges facing bisexual asylum seekers; queer asylum and homonationalism in the Netherlands; and the role of space, faith and LGBTQ organisations in Germany, Italy, the UK and France in supporting queer asylum seekers.

London: UCL Press, 2021. 279p.

Edited by Veronica Federico • Simone Baglioni

This open access book discusses how, and to what extent, the legal and institutional regimes and the socio-cultural environments of a range of European countries (the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, Switzerland and the UK), in the framework of EU laws and policies, have a beneficial or negative impact on the effective capacity of these countries to integrate migrants, refugees and asylum seekers into their labour markets. The analysis builds on the understanding of socio-cultural, institutional and legal factors as “barriers” or “enablers”; elements that may facilitate or obstruct the integration processes. The book examines the two dimensions of integration being access to the labour market (which, translated into a rights language means the right to work) with its corollaries (recognition of qualifications, vocational training, etc.), and non-discriminatory working conditions (which, translated into a rights language means right to both formal and substantial equality) and its corollaries of benefits and duties deriving from joining the labour market. It thereby offers a novel approach to labour market integration and migration/asylum issues given its focus on legal aspects, which includes most recent policy changes and legal decisions (including litigation cases). The robust, evidence-based and comparative research illustrated in the book provides academics and students, but also practitioners and policy makers, with up to date knowledge that will likely impact positively on policy changes needed to better address integration conundrums.

Cham: Springer Nature/Imiscoe, 2021. 264p.

Edited by Carmelo Danisi • Moira Dustin • Nuno Ferreira Nina Held

This two-volume open-access book offers a theoretically and empirically-grounded portrayal of the experiences of people claiming international protection in Europe on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity (SOGI). It shows how European asylum systems might and should treat asylum claims based on people’s SOGI in a fairer, more humane way. Through a combined comparative, interdisciplinary (socio-legal), human rights, feminist, queer and intersectional approach, this book examines not only the legal experiences of people claiming asylum on grounds of their SOGI, but also their social experiences outside the asylum decision-making framework. The authors analyse how SOGI-related claims are adjudicated in different European frameworks (European Union, Council of Europe, Germany, Italy and UK) and offer detailed recommendations to adequately address the intersectional experiences of individuals seeking asylum. This unique approach ensures that the book is of interest not only to researchers in migration and refugee studies, law and wider academic communities, but also to policy makers and practitioners in the field of SOGI asylum.

Cham: Springer Nature/Imiscoe, 2021. 497p.

Edited by Marina Gržinić

Border Thinking: Disassembling Histories of Racialized Violence aims to question and provide answers to current border issues in Europe. Central to this investigation is a refugee crisis that is primarily a crisis of global Western capitalism and its components: modernization, nationalism, structural racism, dispossession, and social, political, and economic violence. In this volume, these notions and conditions are connected with the concept of borders, which seems to have disappeared as a function of the global neoliberal economy but is palpably reappearing again and again through deportations, segregations, and war. How can we think about these relations in an open way, beyond borders? Is it possible to develop border thinking for a radical transformation, as a means to revolutionize the state of things? To do this, we must reconsider what is possible for the social and the political as well as for art and culture.

Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2018. 307p.

Edited by Birgit Glorius • Jeroen Doomernik  

This open access book describes how the numerous arrivals of asylum seekers since 2015 shaped reception and integration processes in Europe. It addresses the structuration of asylum and reception systems, and spaces and places of reception on European, national, regional and local level. It also analyses perceptions and discourses on asylum and refugees, their evolvement and the consequences for policy development. Furthermore, it examines practices and policy developments in the field of refugee reception and integration. The volume shows and explains a variety of refugee reception and integration strategies and practices as specific outcome of multilevel governance processes in Europe. By addressing and contextualizing those multiple experiences of asylum seeker reception, the book is a valuable contribution to the literature on migration and integration, societal development and political culture in Europe.

Cham, SWIT: IMISCOE/Springer Open, 2020. 268p.

By Amairini Sanchez, Michele Cadigan, Dayo Abels-Sullivan, Bryan L. Sykes

 Research on crimmigration—the intersection where criminal and immigration law meet—shows that immigrants are increasingly punished and deported as a consequence of a criminal conviction. We investigate how immigration status shapes the imposition of monetary sanctions. By drawing on interview and court observational data from four states, we demonstrate that the legal opaqueness at the intersection of the crimmigration system often results in crimmigration sanctions—enhanced financial and nonfinancial penalties that are the result of an undocumented immigrant’s liminal legality. Findings show that immigrants are financially exploited through gaps in criminal and immigration law that allow for crimmigration sanctions in the form of bail predation and the exchange of higher financial penalties for reduced or no jail time, lessening an undocumented immigrant’s risk of deportation. The implications of these practices for due process are discussed in detail 

: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences January 2022, 8 (2) 76-97;

By Aidan Mcquade, Juliana Rexha and Anila Trimi  

  This study is based upon the review of 45 cases of potential victims of child trafficking - 31 girls and 14 boys. The data was collected by Child Protection Workers (CPWs) during the period 2016- 2019. The selected period coincides with the Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Presence in Albania work to support Albanian institutions to address child trafficking through a child protection framework. Of the 45 cases examined, 39 had been identified by authorities as potential victims of child trafficking. These cases suggest that trafficking for sexual exploitation, particularly through work in Albania’s nightclubs and entertainment industry, is a principal trafficking risk for girls, and trafficking for forced begging and criminal activity is a principal trafficking risk for boys. While third parties are often involved in this trafficking, there are some instances identified where trafficking is being facilitated or tolerated by the child’s parents. The majority of the cases examined in this study – 41 out of 45 – had no international aspect to them. Rather they represented risks of child trafficking or exploitation wholly within the borders of Albania. This indicates the need for law reform in Albania to recognise trafficking as a domestic as well as an international phenomenon. The study also finds significant evidence of coordination of state actors responsible for child protection in initial response to the identified cases: a multi-stakeholder approach on case management was undertaken in 41 out of 45 cases. However, the study also found significant problems regarding the case management. For example, of the 39 cases identified as potential cases of child trafficking only one was formally and conclusively identified as child trafficking. Furthermore, in 11 cases the exploitation continued even after the identification of the child as a potential victim of trafficking. Of these 11 cases, eight were cases of girls being sexually exploited, hence left in the hands of their traffickers in spite of the identified risks. Such egregious failures may be a result of systemic gender bias, a matter that requires further research and, if necessary, urgent solution. In other words this study found a lack of explicit decision making regarding trafficking identification, lack of follow up of criminal investigations, and worrying lapses in provision of sufficiently robust child protection measures. Furthermore, this study found a poor standard of record keeping and reporting. Hence, these findings indicate that there is still a considerable need for the strengthening of child protection systems in Albania, particularly in co-ordination and follow-up on child trafficking cases.

Vienna, Austria: OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Presence in Albania, 2020. 40p.

By The 

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE),  Office of the Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings

This paper explores the intersections between human trafficking and terrorism by analysing activities of terrorist groups through the lens of trafficking in human beings. Through a critical analysis of legal and policy regimes, the paper provides a comparative study of two crimes – human trafficking and terrorism – based on a series of illustrative examples collected from throughout the OSCE region. The outcome is a set of targeted recommendations to challenge the trafficking practices of terrorist groups by leveraging existing preventative and protective mechanisms in the anti-trafficking field. The intent of these recommendations is to support participating States in preventing the crime of trafficking by terrorist groups, hold the perpetrators fully accountable and protect victims.

Vienna, Austria:  OSCE, 2021. 72p.

By The 

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE),  Office of the Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings

Identifying an adult or child as a victim of trafficking is the first stage of protecting them. In many countries, being identified as a trafficking victim is the gateway to services and support specific to trafficking victims, rather than services and support specific to, for example, refugees or children. The primary purpose of identification is not to gather evidence from potential witnesses or victims of crime, nor to collect data about the number of people who have been trafficked. It is to trigger a State’s obligation to provide protection, including all forms of assistance.
This assistance should not be conditional on victims’ co-operation with the criminal justice system. It should instead offer them a path toward recovery, rehabilitation and restoration of their rights. Indeed, such assistance increases the likelihood of victims regaining their agency and participating in all aspects of society, including criminal proceedings, with the goal of bringing their traffickers to justice.

Currently, in the majority of OSCE participating States, individuals can only be formally identified as victims of trafficking in human beings within the criminal justice system, usually by law enforcement. A recent OSCE report1 indicates that in approximately half of the OSCE participating States (29), only officials associated with law enforcement can designate a person as a trafficking victim. Moreover, in eight participating States only law enforcement can refer them to support services.

Vienna, Austria: OSCE, 2023. 40p,.

By The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE),  Office of the Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings

The report provides an analysis of how technology-facilitated trafficking in human beings has been approached from the perspective of policy and legislation across the OSCE participating States. While looking primarily at the accelerating shift toward government-led responses, the report also examines the policies and practices adopted by the private sector and civil society organizations. In addition, the report offers recommendations for policy and legislative responses by OSCE participating States to the misuse of technology to exploit victims.

Vienna, Austria: OSCE, 2022. 69p.

By Iris Chang

NY. Penguin. 1997. 314p.

In December 1937, one of the most horrific atrocities in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (what was then the capital of China), and within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. In this seminal work, Iris Chang, whose own grandparents barely escaped the massacre, tells this history from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers, that of the Chinese, and that of a group of Westerners who refused to abandon the city and created a safety zone, which saved almost 300,000 Chinese.

Drawing on extensive interviews with survivors and documents brought to light for the first time, Iris Chang's classic book is the definitive history of this horrifying episode.

By Gemma Dipoppa,  Guy Grossman and Stephanie Zonszein

Covid-19 caused a significant health and economic crisis, a condition identified as conducive to stigmatization and hateful behavior against minority groups. It is however unclear whether the threat of infection triggers violence in addition to stigmatization, and whether a violent reaction can happen at the onset of an unexpected economic shock before social hierarchies can be disrupted. Using a novel database of hate crimes across Italy, we show that (i) hate crimes against Asians increased substantially at the pandemic onset, and that (ii) the increase was concentrated in cities with higher expected unemployment, but not higher mortality. We then examine individual, local and national mobilization as mechanisms. We find that (iii) local far-right institutions motivate hate crimes, while we find no support for the role of individual prejudice and national discourse. Our study identifies new conditions triggering hateful behavior, advancing our understanding of factors hindering migrant integration

ESOC Working Paper Series: 2021. 70p.

 By Vasanthi Venkatesh  

Arizona has been in the news for the past few years not only for its vituperative, anti-immigrant policies, but also for the impressive immigrant rights movement that continues to spawn new coalitions and new activities. The large numbers of cases that were and continue to be litigated and the innovative use of law to mobilize present a paradox since it is the law that constructs the “illegality” of undocumented immigrants, providing them very limited recourse to rights claims. This paper analyzes the opportunities in existing legal doctrine for claiming rights for the undocumented. I argue that in the almost categorical acceptance of the plenary power of the Congress in immigration and the absence of a clear-cut articulation of rights for undocumented immigrants, immigrant rights advocates are faced with procedural and substantive obstacles to make legal claims. The legal opportunities that exist currently offer partial and ineffective solutions at best. I then explore what compelled legal mobilization strategies despite the lack of entitlements under immigration law and how the costs of legal strategies are mitigated by other advantages that legal mobilization provides. I suggest that activists invoked the law in various ways, not necessarily enamored by rights discourses or by an unbridled expectation in law as a means to achieve justice. The law, even with its limitations and biases, still provided avenues to curb state power and it also functioned as a symbolic, discursive, and mobilizing resource. I show that undocumented immigrants rely on legal action and rights discourse not only because of the expected diffusional effects of movements such as the civil rights and gay  rights movement but also as acts of resistance and as assertions of quasi-citizenship

Harvard Latino Law Review, Vol. 19, pp.165-201 (2016). 38p.

By Gary J. Hale and Jie Ma

U.S. immigration policy remains murky in substance as well as legislatively incomplete. Polarization of the issue by American politicians and legislators has resulted in both punitive and permissive policy pronouncements over the last four U.S. presidential administrations, most of which have done little to deter migrants from crossing through Mexico into the U.S. in search of a better life.

From a policy perspective, the flow of migrants through Mexico to the United States is seemingly unstoppable — with many believing that U.S. government efforts to curtail this activity have failed. If the intent of previous and existing federal immigration laws and reforms was to conduct immigration processing in an orderly manner, the U.S. government has not succeeded. The current situation on the U.S.-Mexico border demonstrates that walls, fences, barricades, bridges, patrols, technology, and laws do not deter illegal entries. Media coverage of the “border crisis” — including reports of individual crossings and the so-called “caravans” moving through Mexico — has added to the perception that there is no end in sight to the swell of migrants at the southern border.

This research paper reviews some of the implications of at least 30 migrant caravan iterations that were detected traversing Mexico en route to the U.S. from 2017 to 2022. The migrant caravan phenomenon is viewed from a broad perspective and distilled down to the individual iterations to assess commonalities between caravan waves and to determine which “push” and “pull” factors were in place when the caravans were formed and mobilized. The individual caravan iterations are also compared against permissive and punitive U.S. and Mexican immigration policies at the time to assess any discernable cause and effect. Our analysis provides evidence that punitive policies may negatively affect the creation and movement of caravans, while permissive immigration policies may create an impetus for migrant movements. Recommendations for future action are included.

Houston, TX: Baker Institute for Public Policy, 2023. 24p.

By Mizue Aizeki, Ghita Schwarz, Jane Shim, and Samah Sisay

Cruel by Design: Voices of Resistance from Immigration Detention, a report by the Immigrant Defense Project and the Center for Constitutional Rights, shows how the harms associated with ICE detention practices are embedded in the structures of the immigration control regime rather than a manifestation of a broken system. In doing so, it offers a summary of U.S. detention laws to illustrate how the system is designed to make it as easy as possible for the federal government to exclude and deport people. It also shows how the detention system deploys multiple tactics to undermine the ability of individuals to fight deportation. In addition, the report highlights the stories of people who’ve been held in ICE detention, and their resistance and resilience in the face of a draconian system. Piecemeal reforms alone will not be sufficient for remedying the cruelty of this system. What is ultimately required is far-reaching transformation, one aimed at ending detention as a tool of the U.S. regime of exclusion.

New York: Immigrant Defense Project and Center for Constitutional Rights, 2022.  49p.

By Adam G. Lichtenheld,

Libya is a key destination and transit point for people on the move. Since 2017 – when the European Union (EU) endorsed a deal between Italy and Libya to crack down on irregular migration from Africa to Europe along the Central Migration Route – Libyan authorities and local armed groups have detained thousands of refugees, migrants, and asylum-seekers in the country.

An increasing number of reports from human rights organizations have revealed that detainees face massive overcrowding, dire sanitary conditions, and rampant human rights abuses. While there has been significant discussion of the potentially harmful effects of the current detention system in Libya, little is known about arrest and detention patterns and which refugee and migrant profiles are more vulnerable to being detained.
This report examines the social, economic, and demographic determinants of detention of refugees and migrants in Libya. Drawing on surveys of 5,144 refugees, migrants, and asylum-seekers, it compares the profiles and characteristics of those who reported being detained and those who did not in order to identify what factors make people on the move more likely to end up in detention. While the report focuses on the Libyan context, its findings have implications for understanding the drivers, dynamics, and consequences of migrant detention elsewhere. This is important given the growing trend among EU and other Western countries of outsourcing asylum and migration control to transit states in Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

Mixed Migration Centre, 2019. 36p.

By Sabine de Graaf

This literature review summarises research that has been conducted on the impact of family separation on a child, demonstrating how separation from a parent can cause harm to a child. The purpose of the reviews is to provide an indepth overview of recent academic insights and discussions on the impact of ‘family separation’ from a number of different perspectives and contexts and focusses on academic literature from various disciplines published in the past 10 years. [1] The first part of the review considers the impact of family separation in a general context of imprisonment, looking at the impact of parental incarcerations, as well as the specifics of incarceration of either the mother or the father on a child. The second part of the review demonstrates that similar negative impacts on children are seen in the context of family separation as a result of deportation. [1] The main question considered to define the literature review was: What is the impact of family separation on the well-being of children? Literature was sought via Google Scholar, narrowing the search from a period covering 2010-2020. The focus is on studies undertaken in the UK, supplemented by studies done in the US. The key words for the search that were used in a variety of combinations were: family separation, parental incarceration, parental imprisonment, paternal imprisonment, maternal imprisonment. Bibliographies of relevant literature results were cross-referenced to find further relevant studies and discover emerging themes and debates such as the role of family factors in intergenerational transmission of offending (discussed in 1.3).  

London: Bail for Immigration Detainee, 2020. 21p.